


swelter

by dirigibleboyking



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Curtain Fic, M/M, Post-Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Post-Hell, Psychological Trauma, Southern Gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 20:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11043702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleboyking/pseuds/dirigibleboyking
Summary: 'Jesus Christ, Sam, the place is fallin' down. You couldn't have chosen, I dunno, Chicago?'





	swelter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lochinvar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/gifts).



> to Lochinvar, who spent about two hours last year chatting to me about the american south & my plans for this fic <33
> 
> i have used the 'curtain fic' tag; do not be misled, there is unfortunately not a curtain in sight.
> 
> warning for blink-&-you-miss-it dead raccoon incident.

He pleaded so much that he lost his voice. His bones began to fill with words.

-Gabriel García Márquez, _One Hundred Years of Solitude_

 

 

 

There's no aircon in the shop. Warm bottled coke; a fly buzzing somewhere. Wilted vegetables on the shelves. By the door there's a white wire rack of postcards and he spins it round. A bunch of mountains, canals, some white Indian temple; nothing recognisably local.

He looks out at the car. Sam's not moved from the passenger seat, curled up against the window. In the end Dean buys the Indian temple one.

　

In the car he shows it to Sam, who frowns.

'I can't remember what the hell it's called,' says Dean. 'The temple thing, I mean. Can you?'

Sam stares at the postcard. He makes no move to take it from Dean, so Dean passes it to him. He squints at it for about thirty seconds.

'Hey,' Dean says. 'S'okay if you can't. You know.'

Sam doesn't look up. He's still staring, forehead furrowed, most familiar of looks. Holding it so delicately Dean almost can't stand it.

After a minute, two minutes, Dean reaches to take it from him. Sam lets it go. 'It's okay,' he says. 'It's all cool, Sam. We'll check it out later, yeah?'

　

He drives slowly. The town isn't much more than a street, its houses hooded under naked sun, like pale eyelids. Shadows are thin and defined and nothing moves. As they pass a dirty lace curtain twitches in a window.

`The heat bears down thick and rank. It's years since they came this far south. The Impala's leather innards are hot to the touch. Dean's down to one shirt and still soaked, though Sam remains swaddled up in his jacket. He doesn't even look hot.

On the way in here they passed a cinema, a small one, squatting lonely by the side of the road. It was advertising _Les Miserables_ , except they'd missed out the _b_.

'Ain't feeling like a cinema trip, huh, Sam?'

Not a twitch.

'Guess not.'

　

Their house is down a long dirt drive, shrouded in lush green. It takes an hour of Dean cursing and gripping the wheel before they actually find it, but when they finally do he decides he approves of how secretive it is. The house is a wooden shack with a verandah, halfway to falling down, walls all mossy. Out back there's nothing but swamp, a twisted knot of trees and dark undergrowth, a slow-dissolving richness to the air. Humidity like wet wool against his skin and he looks once more at Sam, who is behind him, as usual. This is not a good place to be sick but it might be a good place to hide.

Still, he grimaces. Theatrical. 'Jesus Christ, Sam, the place is fallin' down. You couldn't have chosen, I dunno, Chicago?'

Sam's eyelids flicker. Maybe he smiles a little. Dean goes inside without looking to see if Sam follows, but he listens for the answering footsteps and he knows.

The inside is about as Dean guessed. Emerald moss mapping the walls in misshapen continents ('Hey, Sammy, which one you reckon's Atlantis?'). The plumbing's more or less functional. There's an ancient rusty generator that should do. He reckons he can nail the rest together. There's a couple chairs, even a disgusting old mattress upstairs. Hell, there's an upstairs. It isn't the worst place they've bedded down.

He unloads some of their stuff, just what they need for tonight. They've got one of those little camping stove things and he sets it down in the middle of the kitchen floor, surrounds it with every blanket and hoodie they have. Sam lingers in the doorway and when he sees the blanket-nest Dean's made for them his face twitches a little.

Dean's kneeling there assembling sandwiches. 'You sittin' or what?'

Sam moves forward quick as if someone's jerked him on a string. He settles opposite Dean, sitting awkwardly on top of the blankets, crossing his legs, a palm resting on each knee. Dean acts casual, going on with the sandwiches.

'Thought it'd be better if we slept down here tonight,' he says. 'Haven't decided yet if I trust the floorboards upstairs and all. It'll be fun, it'll be like camping. Hey, we shoulda bought marshmallows. We could have made s'mores.'

Sam isn't quite looking him in the eye, but he's paying attention, it's clear from the tilt of his head. Dean gets on with the sandwiches. He puts everything into them. Cheese and bacon and a bunch of lettuce and tomato and onion. He fries them until the cheese has melted and gone all crispy, how Sam always liked, and gives him the first one. Sam begins to eat, if sort of mechanically.

They eat by the light of a couple old oil-lamps. Dean watches how shadows wander into the corners of their kitchen, spidering, swelling. Spilling. Neither of them speak. In the deeps of the house, something softly creaks.

For a few minutes Dean wants to pretend that this is Before. Back in some magic space when he himself was untarnished, when Sam was bold and graceful and got angry with him, somewhere after Dad and before the angels. He wants it badly. He looks at Sam, just out of the corner of his eye, and he senses himself to be alone.

Sam, _his_ Sam, isn't dead; he's gone far more completely than that. He's changed. He's irrecoverable. Dean can't think like this.

When they're done he takes the plates out back and washes them in the old tap behind the house. He's as fast as possible but when he gets back Sam hasn't moved from where he's sitting. He doesn't even look up.

'You tired?'

Sam raises his head. Hair all falling in his eyes. Quiet smile. 'I guess,' he says.

(Warmth blossoms, horrendously, in Dean's chest.)

'Okay,' he says. 'I don't know about you, but I'm goin' to bed. We can sort all this crap out tomorrow.'

　

They've gone legit. Well, mostly. New names, new license plate, new bank account with actual honest-to-God American dollars in. Bobby's promised to come out and give him a hand with things, if he wants. And Dean does want. But not yet.

That first night they bed down in the kitchen with the gas stove between them and Dean lies there in the dark and listens to Sam breathing. He knows he's awake and for a moment he has this blind, bizarre urge to get up and just wrap himself around Sam. For a moment there in the dark Dean loves him so hard it feels like he's dying.

He doesn't sleep much that first night. It takes less time than he'd've thought for Sam's breathing to even out in sleep, but Dean just lies on his side and stares out at the salt-spray of stars framed by the kitchen window. He's waiting for something- for screams, for seizures- but Sam's breathing stays deep and even, same as every night since Dean got him back.

He's so _still_ now. Dean had anticipated a lot, but not this. He moves like one of those dark angular shadows that slid along the walls of their new town as they drove. He holds himself different. Dean can't put his finger on it. It's like Sam's carrying a sort of silence inside him. Like something with blossoms and thorns and long pale fingers winding round his organs and crawling very slowly up his throat.

Dean dozes off eventually and wakes at dawn, sweating. The sickness in his gut lets him know what he dreamed of. When he sits up he sees that Sam is sitting quietly on the floor, back to the wall.

'Mornin',' he says.

Sam looks quietly back at him with his hair all fucked up.

Over the next few days they go about the business of settling in. Dean cobbles together a bunch of the furniture, Sam sitting beside him and carefully handing him the nails. They venture into the town a few times and Dean chats with the locals in a more or less successful effort to establish them as non-threatening. He manages to get them hooked up with running water and electricity. He buys groceries and another mattress. He rejects two calls from Lisa. He gets them both accounts at the local library and logs into a computer there to check out the town's history, just in case. And the whole time he talks, a constant stream of chatter that would have driven Old Sam nuts, asking him questions, cracking bullshit jokes, commenting on everything they see. Every time Sam smiles Dean hoards it inside himself.

Their house has a couple rooms upstairs, which is more than Dean had actually predicted, and the floorboards seem pretty okay. Downstairs there's the kitchen and the bathroom, which doesn't have a bath. Dean didn't raise the question of whether or not they'd share a room. He just dragged both the mattresses into the bigger one and Sam didn't object.

The first real scare comes when they've been in the house just over a week. They've got a shitty little oven now and to celebrate, Dean makes steak. Which Sam eats, carefully and uncomplainingly, and fifteen minutes later Dean finds him throwing up into the toilet.

Okay, he thinks as he kneels there, not knowing whether to touch, what to do. Okay, okay, okay. Looks like red meat's out. He studies the curve of Sam's cheek, turned away from him. He has a moment of realising that he needs to be careful with telling Sam what to do because Sam'll do anything he says unquestioningly.

The nights are the hardest part. Sam doesn't have nightmares- or if he does, he has them very quietly- but Dean does. No matter how hard he tries to shut himself off from thinking, everything comes back at night. Generally in the form of his own time served, only now as he's lying there he's thinking _this happened to Sammy too_. And then he starts wondering if his whole family doomed to go to the rack one by one, only in the dreams his family always seems to include Lisa and Ben and that's just the kicker, really.

He always wakes to the sound of Sam's soft breathing. That hasn't changed. There's something unfair about that.

It's the things that are the same that are the worst. Sam is so different- a different person, Dean thinks, sometimes, before he can stop himself, and feels like shit for it. He moves more carefully, talks very rarely, talks differently, seems barely engaged with anything outside his head. Dean isn't sure how much he remembers from before Hell. He doesn't want to ask. He isn't even sure how much Sam remembers of Dean. He'd rather not know.

But then sometimes he'll do something. He'll frown, and Dean's heart'll clench like a fist. He'll give one of Sam's half-stifled grins, the way Sam used to grin when he and Dean were trying not to crack each other up in front of a witness or something. Dean's never been so aware of who he's lost as when the ghost of his Sam moves beneath this Sam's skin.

'They never let me forget your face,' says Sam quietly, as he says everything now, tracing the whorls in the floorboards with a finger. He's sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor. It's a Tuesday. Evening. The light's fading slow. 'Your name, sometimes. Mine, too. They weren't big on identity, I guess.'

It's been three weeks since they moved in. Dean's standing at the stove, making chilli. He doesn't want to hear this.

'Or maybe I just never forgot it,' says Sam into the silence.

　

They share a bedroom. They don't talk about it.

　

They can't see the church from the windows- too much greenery all strangling the house- but they can hear it. On Sunday mornings hymns drift in through the windows, wisps of hymns, snatches and fragments, faith's windborne flotsam.

It makes Dean uncomfortable and he'd rather just drive off for the day somewhere, but Sam seems to like it. He leans out through the windows- always open, it's always so hot- and listens, frowning slightly. Sometimes only for moments. Sometimes for whole mornings.

It's on one such morning that their first visitor comes. Dean jolts when he hears the knock, firm and insistent; he opens it with his gun drawn, and stuffs it hurriedly back into his jeans when he sees it's Mrs Grady. She's a tall thin white lady who lives in a house- similar to theirs in design and seclusion, though hers is neatly whitewashed- about half a mile away. She's wearing an enormous white sunhat that looks like it might displace the doorway if she tries to come inside. Dean knows her, a little; he's talked to her briefly in the town.

'Dean, boy. Now Ah was just passin' through on my way back home and I saw your place, so Ah thought to come an' say good mornin' an' just ask, boy, whether you're a member of our Church yet?'

'No, Ma'am,' he says. 'And I ain't lookin' to be rude, but that won't change.'

'Now that's a shame- that's a shame. Ain't your brother here too?' She cranes her head as if trying to see past Dean; he can't help shifting to block her line of sight. There's a flask of holy water in the kitchen, he knows. (He should have been keeping it in his pocket. Getting lazy.)

'I don't suppose he's let the Lord into his heart, now?' Mrs Grady is asking.

Dean cracks a smile. 'Oh, Sammy's got Jesus, alright.'

A tentative noise; footsteps behind him. Dean doesn't take his eyes off Mrs Grady- she might never see seventy again, but it's amazing what possession can do for the joints- but he senses Sam, Sam's warmth and Sam's size, behind him. 'Dean?' Too quietly for Mrs Grady to hear.

'Everything's fine, Sam.' He wishes there were a way to tell Sam to get back upstairs that didn't suggest awareness of a threat. Not that he thinks she is a threat.

Mrs Grady adjusts her pince-nez to look at Sam properly. 'My, my, aren't you tall? Your brother tells me you got Christ in your heart, boy.'

Sam doesn't seem certain how to react. Dean hasn't looked at him yet, but he can feel him shifting, awkward, perhaps a little skittish. They haven't really tried being around other people yet.

'Now,' says Mrs Grady, 'Ah wouldn't mind just comin' in for a little sit-down, if you boys don't mind. Tires me out, this traipsing back and forth on Sundays, but Ah don't get out much now. And if you wouldn't mind gettin' me a glass of water-'

Dean hesitates and Sam sees. He frowns; kicks Dean's ankle surreptitiously. Then, when Dean stares at him in shock, he turns to Mrs Grady. His arms are wrapped round himself, hands on his elbows, but other than that he could be Dean's Sam again.

'Come in, please,' Sam says, barely a shake in his voice. All the polite kindness that Dean saw a hundred times in interviewing victims. 'I'll find you a chair. Dean, would you please get a glass of water?'

Mrs Grady gets her chair and her water but Dean barely hears a thing she says. Sam's gone quiet now, probably won't say anything else until the evening, but for a moment there. For a moment. He looks at Sam, who is sitting cross-legged on the floor, not quite looking at anyone, head a little bowed, doing his best to nod politely and keep focused on the conversation. Mrs Grady has not said a word about Sam's unusual choice of seat and is continuing to comfortably talk to them both about her faith. It makes Dean like her, just a little.

He's not really listening, but he hears it when she says the word 'Satan'. Dean flinches, feels himself flinch. Sam must have heard it, but he hasn't reacted at all. Neither of them look at each other. Who knows if Mrs Grady notices.

She stays for almost forty minutes, before leaving with a fairly unprecedented promise to come by with a tray of brownies soon. Dean shows her out, leaving Sam sitting on his cushion. When the door finally closes behind her he lets himself just lean against it and sink for a moment.

Footsteps. Sam. Dean opens his eyes. Sam's standing a few feet from him, half-turned, tentative, as if he wants to ask something.

'Sam,' he says.

Sam opens his mouth; closes it again. Then he looks at Dean, earnestly, and says, 'Was that good?'

When Dean can speak again he says, 'Yeah, Sam. That was good.'

　

Dean finds work at the town garage. It's slow. He doesn't like leaving Sam on his own. Sam doesn't say how he feels about being left.

　

Dean finds a radio in a car-boot sale. Sam listens to hymns on it, sitting close. Head tilted; hands folded; Puritan. Dean always leaves the room, then.

　

They reach a month. If things are getting better, it's happening slowly. A couple more locals drop in. One lady brings an eggplant casserole. It occurs to Dean that he doesn't know what they really think he and Sam are to each other.

It occurs to Dean that he doesn't know what he really thinks he and Sam are to each other.

　

There's one horrible morning where Dean wakes up and Sam isn't in the bedroom. He checks over the house, wanting to shout Sam's name, forcing himself to keep quiet in case something else took Sam; finally finds Sam just sitting in the road outside the house, staring at a red smear on the asphalt. It's half seven in the morning and already the asphalt is hot to the touch when Dean kneels down beside him.

Sam's staring at an animal squashed on the road. A raccoon, a small one. Its guts are coming out of its anus. Dean puts a hand on Sam's shoulder; Sam starts, looks briefly strangely lost. 'I-'

'You reckon we can pickle it?' says Dean.

They both look back down at it.

'I don't think so,' says Sam doubtfully.

They go back inside.

It's a Saturday so Dean isn't working. He makes breakfast- they still don't have a table, but they both prefer sitting on the floor now anyway. Sam only picks at his food. It's almost comforting.

'It was beautiful, you know,' he says.

For a moment Dean thinks Sam's talking about the raccoon.

'Down there. In a weird way. D'you-' a cautious glance- 'd'you understand that?'

'Yeah,' says Dean levelly. 'I guess.' He gets up. Washes his plate.

'They- sometimes it was like a garden,' Sam goes on. His hair's fallen forward, hiding his eyes. Needs cutting. 'And he would- sing, you know?'

Dean doesn't say anything.

'They told me things,' says Sam. 'I know things.'

A spore of a thought drifts in; settles; unsettles. The house breathes silently around them.

'Sam,' he says, disquieted, 'you do know you're out, right?'

Sam looks at him with absolutely nothing in his eyes and says, 'Yeah, Dean.'

　

They're used to the heat by now, or at least Dean is; who knows about Sam, although it never seems to bother him. The humidity's like a second clinging skin. (Sometimes, Sam claws at his arms, absently, as if he doesn't know he's doing it.) One day there's a strange grey sheen to the sky, unearthly, and thunder rolls.

They sit on the porch and drink beer as the deluge begins. Dean feels the peace of rain right down to his bones, the beautiful grey peace. A strange rain-perfume, something silvery, diffusing through the open windows. He catches Sam's eye. Reaches across to clink their beers together. Sam looks bemused.

Dean's happy. He can feel it settling inside him. This life is theirs; it's the only one they have. They don't have a choice about loving it.

The rain throbs down.

　

There comes a day- of course there does- when the dam breaks. Sam shouts. They both shout. It's their first row since Sam got back.

'You can't do this forever, Dean,' Sam's saying desperately. 'You can't keep hanging around trying to fix me forever. You need a life. You need to be able to do what you want. You can't do this forever.'

'Who the hell says I can't?'

It's stupid and childish and they're both on their feet. Sam seems tall for the first time in months. Dean feels like he's blazing with something; fury, love, the euphoria of finally seeing Sam angry again.

Sam fists his hands in his eyes and takes them away again. He looks unbelievably frustrated.

'Go away. Get a girl-'

'You're my fucking girl.'

' _Lisa_ , Dean.'

'Screw Lisa,' he says, and he'll regret that but for the moment it feels like he could mean it.

Sam blinks, Sam knows he's bullshitting, and nothing gets resolved, not really, but when Sam finally gives up and goes upstairs he closes the door a good deal harder than usual, and Dean could fucking cheer.

　

　

They've been here four months. There are days where Sam doesn't talk at all. There are quiet moments in the dark. There are nightmares.

Once, lying in the dark, Sam says: 'I love you'. Just like that. Then he goes to sleep.

Nights are still the hardest part, but they're not so hard as they used to be.

　

Bobby comes over. He looks them both over. Something like suspicion in his eyes. 'Glad you boys are doin' okay,' he says.

　

Mrs Grady brings brownies. Dean decides she probably isn't a demon.

 

They have bad days. They both do. Dean drives out to the nearest town with a bar, one day, comes home at three A.M stinking of sex and whiskey; Sam doesn't say a word. Only hauls him, lips pursed, into a bath. He's truly angry, Dean can tell, but he doesn't say anything.

Sam talks about Hell, sometimes, in a slow, dreamy way, and Dean wishes he wouldn't. Sam may be ready, or maybe for Sam it isn't about being ready, but Dean isn't.

The heat bears down. But they survive that. Dean's beginning to think they can survive anything. It's a dangerous thought but it gives him hope.

　

Every Sunday morning the hymns drift in, _Heaven_ and _grace_ and _mercy_ floating on the air like dandelion seeds, and Sam listens.

 

**Author's Note:**

> so, i really don't feel very confident about this one. it was supposed to be much longer, but it's been hanging around half-finished & tormenting me all year, so eventually i faced the fact that this was going to be a oneshot & finished it. plus, i wanted to post something before my a-level exams begin (nine days, ugh ugh ugh). maybe i'll expand this into a 'verse at some point, who knows.
> 
> want to twitter-stalk me, it's @prunesquallors. 
> 
> i'm a whore for all & any feedback. much beloved <3


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